Feedback Secrets reader Sue Six recently published here first novel, Fish Tree Tales: Stories From Japan. We caught up with Sue to ask her about her experiences on the project and to get her perspective on the self-publishing process…

Can you tell us a little bit about your book, and how you first got the idea for Fish Tree Tales?

It just sort of evolved. I began with a journal many years ago, and letters with stories in them to friends and family. Then a “verbal history” of stories I’d tell to friends after I got back to the States. It seemed I was always telling stories, and eventually I realized that I had a small collection of them written down ~ but I was always telling or writing new ones, too.

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In our last post on Batch Processing we wrote about the incredible value that can comes from knowing the “priority stack” for your business and making sure that those weekly business functions that you deem as most important, are completed without fail, every week.

So what is the other secret to batch processing? As we mentioned in our last post in this series, hopefully one day your business will grow to the point where you have to hire people to work in order to farm out some of your business’ functions. Until you reach that point you will have to decide which functions you will take on, and which you will leave alone until you can retain some help.

Once again there should be two lists. A first list of those functions that you must complete each week without fail, and a second list of all the tasks you hope to hammer out in an ideal week. The second secret ingredient in batch processing is to make sure to leave some business function off of both of these lists.

Each of us is different, and some entrepreneurs seem to be “superhuman” in there ability to accomplish an unnatural number of tasks each and every week. The point is that you know your own optimal stress load. To little stress and human beings tend to get lax, on the other hand, if you stack too much responsibility on yourself you may feel swamped if you are unable to complete your tasks.

Several weeks in a row of feeling swamped can have an extremely discouraging effect on a small business owner. This is why we recommend a small list, faithfully completed every week. Too much of load and you run the risk of either stressing yourself to the max or of spreading yourself so thin that you cannot maintain the standards of quality that you have set for your organization. As Henry David Thoreau wrote in Walden, “a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to leave alone.”

Obviously professional poker players are not the only group in danger of going on tilt while at work. Like a dope dealer without discipline, Internet Marketers are often guilty of using too much of their own product. The resulting condition is known as “information overload”.

As your brain is being drowned in a glut of its own neurotransmitters the victim often feels a host of uncomfortable symptoms. These can include feelings of tension and duress, a cold sweat, as well as light nausea.

The occupational hazard in this industry comes from the fact that the nature of the web makes it extremely hard to stay “on topic”. The temptation to abandon whatever goal you are working on to click one of the random links on your screen is extremely seductive.

Switching gears from one train of thought to another is such a haphazard manner causes a good deal of stress not to mention an inefficient use of time.

The cure for this condition is a technique known as “batch processing”. I first got the idea of using “batch processing” to make my work schedule more efficient while reading Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Work Week. Ferriss definitely had the right idea when he suggested building a schedule based on clumping together as many similar activities as possible.

There is a clear advantage that comes from grouping activities such as writing blog post, producing email newsletter broadcasts, doing online research, or reading books. Not only does batch processing make you more efficient but it saves a lot of wear-and-tear on your system.

Tags: internet marketing, information overload, online business, make money online